


Pump Up the Volume, Shake Off the Cobwebs

by cailures



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-18 10:55:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11872881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cailures/pseuds/cailures
Summary: The team goes camping to relax, but when Peter and Gamora piss off a sentient forest, Groot ends up running for his life...into a jungle where nobody can find him.





	Pump Up the Volume, Shake Off the Cobwebs

**Author's Note:**

> FOR #9

Drax held out a marshmallow, skewered on a metal stick twice as long again as Groot. Groot considered. Hopping onto Drax’s hand, he scuttled up the metal stick and carefully eased the marshmallow off the top, spearing on one of his hands and growing his arm out towards the fire. 

Drax set the stick aside. “Fire does not burn you?”

“I am Groot.” 

“He’s fire-resistant,” Rocket piped up. “Unless some asshole goes fucking with his sap again.” He turned to Groot. "Hey, can you do mine while you're at it?" 

Groot held out his other arm for Rocket's marshmallow, pointing the tiny branches at the end into a sharp tip. Rocket settled back into his chosen log to watch the fire against the deep purple of the night sky with a sigh of contentment. Groot really was cute as a baby. Sapling. Whatever.

"Where'd Quill get to?"

"He requested that Gamora attend him to investigate a noise they heard beyond the camp." Drax frowned. "This planet is uninhabited. I do not understand what there is to investigate." 

For a split second, Rocket kept looking at him, waiting for him to catch up. Then he rolled his eyes, exaggerating the motion so much that it was really more a roll of his whole head. "I don't think the local fauna is exactly what he's interested in investigating, buddy. Although I guess you could technically still call it xenobiology."

"Xenobiology?"

"Sex, you giant weirdo. He wants in her pants. I guess he thinks all the - " Rocket waved his arm at the blue vines waving serenely at the edges of their clearing, peppered with tiny pink flowers " - is romantic or whatever." He realized belatedly that Groot was technically still an infant, but Groot seemed completely absorbed in the brown areas bubbling up on his marshmallow and correspondingly uninterested in the humie’s sex life. Good. 

"I tried to tell him that she will never sleep with him. I do not think he understood." 

With his marshmallow finished to his satisfaction, Groot retracted his arm and considered his prey for a moment. Picking his spot, he slowly opened his mouth to its widest possible extent and descended on the marshmallow with deliberate attention. 

"You're going to get covered in marshmallow goo." Groot obviously cared more about his current mouthful of sugar, so Rocket turned back to Drax. "Dude. They're already - "

"Absolutely not!" 

"It's so obvious; how can you not see it? Why do you think she agreed to go with him on some stupid investigation of imaginary noises?"

"Quill is a loser. He - "

"Hey!" Rocket interrupted him, scrambling up too late to stop Groot from chomping into his marshmallow as well. "Oy, that's mine."

"I am Groot." _Not anymore!_ Even through a mouthful of sticky sugar, the smugness was unmistakeable. 

Drax guffawed. Rocket ignored it. "Well, if you'd _told_ me, I wouldn't have." Rocket huffed his irritation and grabbed a marshmallow of his own, but before he could get back to his argument with Drax, the wind in the clearing abruptly picked up from a light breeze to a serious bluster. 

"I am Groot." _What the fuck?_ Jumping down from his log, Groot hunkered down on the lee side for protection. 

"Who taught you that kind of language?" Rocket demanded. "It was me, wasn't it? Nevermind. Since when does this planet have surprise windstorms?"

Drax stared around in confusion - probably not used to enemies he can't muscle, stab, or shoot out of his way. The wind was still picking up, sending their marshmallows and sleeping bags skittering along the ground to catch in the vines at the edge of the clearing. All the tents were pulling alarmingly at their pegs. 

"I will shield you!" Drax stood up abruptly, fixing his feet under his shoulders and crossing his arms. He immediately fell flat on his ass. 

Rocket groaned. "No, idiot, we gotta go in the forest. The trees will block the wind." Grabbing for Groot, Rocket started booking it, crawling low to the ground instead of insisting on standing up to offer 7 feet of target to the wind like _certain other morons present_. He hit the edge of the treeline, tucking in under a clump of vines. The wind immediately dropped from gale-force crazy to a stiff breeze. He turned around to check on Groot - who was shrinking away from what looked like half a dozen living spiderwebs. Looking around, Rocket could see more of them attached to the trees, apparently totally inert until they decided that his friend looked like easy prey. 

"Hey, back off. Hey, hey, you - I said get off him." Rocket swatted at the webs, but by that time another three or four had descended from the trees to take a look, and Groot gave a terrified squeak and set off running into the forest. 

"Groot, no!"

Rocket charged off after him, then hesitated, thinking of Drax: wait for him to catch up so they didn't all get separated? He turned back and Groot was gone, vanished into the dim underbrush without even a trail of footsteps. Rocket stared frantically into the forest, his eyes jumping at every movement within a foot of the ground. 

Drax lumbered up, bearing the signs of having fallen at least once more on the way. The sentient spiderwebs - or whatever they were - didn't seem any more interested in him than in Rocket; apparently Groot was the only one bite-sized enough to look like food to them, which really wasn't very fucking encouraging.

"Drax!" Rocket grabbed his pant leg and started trying to drag him forward into the forest. "Come on, Groot ran off; he got attacked by those - " he pointed to the webs " - things; I guess they decided they wanted a Flora colossus for a snack, and -"

"He ran off which way?"

Rocket pointed. The forest looked like every other patch of forest: tangles of blue vines, occasional gray-blue trees with those fucking cobwebs stuck on them, light ground cover of smaller green-leafed plants, and no sign of Groot.

"I could destroy every tree and vine in a mighty slaughter," Drax mused, "but it would take a long time. Perhaps months." 

Rocket stamped his foot in frustration: Drax had a stupid plan as usual, but this time he didn't exactly have any brighter ideas to counter with. He mentally ticked off everything he had with him: 3 firebombs (great if he wanted to burn himself and Drax alive; not so great otherwise), six regular bombs (utterly useless against sentient cobwebs), a few sticks of dynamite, some spare shrapnel grenades, an electric bomb that only worked in space...

"Let's go back to the ship," he decided. "There's something there, or at least something we can jury-rig. How hard can it be to kill spiderwebs?”

Their ship is only about half a kilometer from the clearing where they'd set up camp: far enough away that it didn't ruin the view, close enough to get to in an emergency. And to Rocket's surprise, the other two were already there.

"What the fuck _is_ that wind?"

"Oh, uh..." Quill scratched his head. “I think it’s our fault. We may have pissed off the forest."

"How do you piss off a _forest_? What did you do, start shooting up the place"

"Well..." Gamora had apparently discovered a new fascination with the wall. 

"Oh my god, don't tell me about it; I don't want to know." Rocket rolled his eyes. He jabbed Drax with his elbow. "Told you." 

Drax looked lost. It wasn't a good look on him.

"Anyway, let's assume the solution isn't the same as the problem and _never speak of it again._ What have we got?"

**

After running through all the inventory of everything that might be useful, they failed to come up with a solution that wouldn't kill (a) Groot, (b) all of them, or (c) both. 

"I have an idea," said Quill suddenly. "Rocket, what do we have on the ship for loudspeakers?"

Six hours later, the ship was home to the most powerful loudspeaker array that they could wire together. A teetering pile of mismatched speakers formed a hollow mound on top of the ship, with the inside full of hastily-patched connections and duct tape. 

Peter hit play on the one radio they'd wired up to the whole contraption, and the sounds of a guitar intro started blasting out across - by Gamora's calculations, anyway - a 30-mile radius. 

Rocket wasn't sure they'd really reach a big enough broadcast area, but surely Groot couldn't have gone that far on such tiny legs, right? On the other hand, this was a creature that could lose track of what he was doing in 30 seconds and once literally got lost inside his own ship. Rocket decided immediately that he didn't want to go down that road and really, wouldn't building a shiny new set of pressure grenades be a better use of his time? 

After four hours with no Groot in sight, even innovations in explosive awesomeness couldn't hold his attention. And the music was starting to get on his nerves. "I want a problem I can blow up," he muttered, stalking into the deserted cockpit to stare balefully out at the forest. "Just a nice, bombable, mineable, explodable problem. That makes really satisfying screaming noises when it dies." 

Day was starting to break: the sun on this planet was a pale, hazy pink, and the sky slowly changed from rose pink to white as it got light. The blue forest didn't look any more inviting in the daylight. Rocket wondered if they could make a trail of Skittles ending at the ship: would Groot be able to follow that? Would he get sick to his stomach before he got to them? Would he get distracted and wander off in search of butterflies or something? How would they even know where to put it?

He dropped his head down onto the console with a thunk. 

A huge hand pawing at his shoulder woke him up. “Fuck off, what?" 

"You use that language in front of children?" Drax said, and Rocket opened his eyes to see Groot perched in the palm of Drax's hand, bopping his head along to the thumping of the speaker overhead. "Groot!"

"I am Groot," Groot agreed, and hopped off to perch on Rocket's shoulder. 

"You came back! You asshole! Never do that to me again; look, you gave me gray fur. See?"

"I am Groot." _That fur was always gray_. 

"You can't even tell a head from a hat; how would you know?"

"I am Groot." 

"Don't just 'I am Groot' me, punk. Now come here so I can make sure that cobweb shit didn't hurt you." 

"I am Groot."

Drax rolled his eyes and left them to it.


End file.
